from the stopmakingfunofme.pdf dept

Last year, YouTube personality [add scare quotes as needed] Matt Hosseinzadeh (a.k.a., "Matt Hoss," "Horny Tony," "Bold Guy") sued H3H3 Productions (composed of YouTube personalities Ethan and Hilla Klein) for copyright infringement. His argument? Their video criticizing his pickup-lines-and-parkour video infringed on his registered copyright by using footage from his video. He decided to make his lawsuit even stupider by adding defamation claims after the Kleins criticized his legal threats.

After digging himself a $3,750 legal fee hole, Hoss's lawyer issued a cease and desist to the Kleins, demanding they:

Judge Katherine Forrest has issued her ruling [PDF] in the case and there's nothing in it for Matt Hoss. Hoss says copyright infringement. The Kleins say fair use. The judge says:

The key evidence in the record consists of the Klein and Hoss videos themselves. Any review of the Klein video leaves no doubt that it constitutes critical commentary of the Hoss video; there is also no doubt that the Klein video is decidedly not a market substitute for the Hoss video. For these and the other reasons set forth below, defendants’ use of clips from the Hoss video constitutes fair use as a matter of law.

The court further points out that criticism and commentary are perhaps the most solid foundation on which to build a fair use defense.

It is well-established that “[a]mong the best recognized justifications for copying from another's work is to provide comment on it or criticism of it.” Id. Indeed, the Second Circuit has held “there is a strong presumption that factor one favors the defendant if the allegedly infringing work fits the description of uses described in section 107,” including “criticism” and “comment.”

The court also takes apart Hoss's claim the Kleins' challenge of his takedown notice was somehow a violation of the DMCA.

The Ninth Circuit has held that, in submitting a takedown notification, “a copyright holder need only form a subjective good faith belief that a use is not authorized.” [...] In other words, a copyright holder is not liable for misrepresentation under the DMCA if they subjectively believe the identified material infringes their copyright, even if that belief is ultimately mistaken. See id. It is clear to this Court that the same subjective standard should apply to the “good faith belief” requirement for counter notifications. If the same standard did not apply, creators of allegedly infringing work would face a disparate and inequitable burden in appealing an online service provider’s decision to remove or disable access to their work. Given the fact that the statutory requirements for takedown notices and counter notifications are substantially the same, the DMCA plainly does not envision such a scheme.

The court then dismisses the defamation claims, which targeted statements made by the Kleins in their video discussing this very lawsuit. (Hosseinzadeh added the defamation claims in his second amended complaint.) Hoss claimed being portrayed as someone who sues people when he's criticized was defamatory -- an assertionhe made in this lawsuit he filed against people who criticized him. The court points out, redundantly, that the statements made by the Kleins were (so very obviously) "substantially true." Even if they weren't "substantially true," they would be inactionable statements of opinion.

This spectacular loss on both fronts should be a warning to others who think they can sue their critics into silence. But it probably will do little to deter either of the stupid actions Hoss engaged in: bogus DMCA takedown demands and a laughable lawsuit. As always, hope springs eternal in the butthurt.

from the moed-down dept

Back in June, we had a post about an absolutely ridiculous lawsuit filed by noted internet news troll Chuck C. Johnson against Gawker, basically because they said some mean things about him, and mocked Johnson's own style of publishing bullshit articles that attempt to imply something awful about someone by asking a question about them. In this case, Gawker, mockingly seized upon some joking claims about Johnson supposedly shitting on the floor of a dormroom, which no one believed, but which Gawker used to mock Johnson. Johnson, for months and months and months, used to threaten libel lawsuits against basically anyone who mocked him, so it was interesting to see one actually get filed. But that was about the extent of the interest. Because the lawsuit was nuts. Almost nothing in it made even the slightest bit of sense, starting with filing in Missouri. Johnson lives and works in California. Gawker is based in NY. The stories about Johnson had nothing to do with Missouri. About the only thing in Missouri was... the one lawyer, John C. Burns, who was willing to represent Johnson (Burns had also helped Johnson in an earlier case involving Ferguson, Missouri). When questioned why it was filed in Missouri, Burns would only reply: "I will say this: I’m not an idiot."

Then, in October, Johnson and Burns filed a ridiculous laugh-out-loud legal collage of a brief in the case that certainly moved the "idiot" needle away from Burns' assertion and more strongly towards the alternative. As Adam Steinbaugh noted in his analysis at the Popehat link above, the brief (apart from seriously going beyond the court's fairly clear limits) made no sense. It was basically a conspiracy theory argument, complete with random clippings of things. The court had no time for it, and told Burns to file something that actually met the requirements of the court.

And, finally, a little over a week ago, the court again suggested that Burns' "I'm not an idiot" statement needs at least a bit more evidence as the case has been dismissed on the basis of "why the fuck did you guys file this in Missouri?" Okay, the actual legal reasons are a bit more involved, and a bit less profane, but it's still the same basic thing. It goes step by step through the silly arguments that Burns/Johnson made for why the case was legitimately filed in Missouri and says "LOL, no." The conclusion is pretty straightforward:

In this case, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to plaintiffs, plaintiffs have failed
to meet their “minimal” burden of proof to show that the balance of the relevant factors weighs in
favor of the exercise of personal jurisdiction over the defendants in this forum. For the reasons
discussed above, the Court concludes that defendants’ contacts with Missouri are insufficient to
indicate they purposely availed themselves of the benefits and protections of the laws of Missouri

Get out of Missouri, folks.

Of course, this isn't necessarily over just yet. That's because last month, just as the statute of limitations was about to run out, Johnson, without a lawyer, basically filed a carbon copy lawsuit in California, just so he'd have other options. Of course, since it's a carbon copy of the Missouri lawsuit, the California lawsuit bizarrely spends many pages arguing why it's okay to sue Gawker... in Missouri. Yes, the following (and many, many, many more mentions of Missouri) are in the lawsuit:

Also, you see that footnote saying that it was last checked on June 17th? That's because June 18th is when it filed the Missouri lawsuit, but why bother updating anything six months later when you file in California.

There's also the following, in the second paragraph of the lawsuit, which is clearly untrue:

If you can't read that, it reads:

Plaintiff Charles C. Johnson has never before initiated a lawsuit for defamation.

Yeah, sure. You mean other than the other one you filed six months earlier using basically the identical text to this lawsuit, but just in a totally different state? Or does that not count?

Of course, without the aid of any "not an idiot" lawyer in California, Johnson apparently didn't spend much time researching the fact that California has a pretty strong anti-SLAPP law, which very likely means that not only will he also lose this case in California, but he's likely going to have to pay Gawker's lawyers for the privilege.

from the silencing-the-press dept

Mother Jones, the well-known, politically-focused publication, has prevailed in a ridiculous SLAPP suit filed by billionaire Frank VanderSloot. VanderSloot was upset about a 2012 profile that Mother Jones published about him, his multi-level marketing, dietary supplement company Melaleuca, and the millions of dollars he was donating to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. VanderSloot insisted that the article was defamatory, though you'll have to squint really hard to figure out where and how. You can read the link above, or the court's full ruling to get all of the background. In short, though, most of it came down to the question of whether or not VanderSloot engaged in "gay-bashing" in attacking a local Idaho reporter who had exposed some problematic behavior of the Boy Scouts, involving a local leader who was accused of molesting boys. The Mother Jones article used that incident as a key point in its story about VanderSloot, describing some advertisements VanderSloot had taken out, which attacked the earlier story about the Boy Scouts, as "gay bashing" because the ads focused on the fact that the reporter in those original articles, Peter Zuckerman, was gay.

The ruling even gets into a down-in-the-weeds discussion over whether or not anyone would take the term "gay bashing" to literally mean physically hitting someone, as opposed to the obviously colloquial notion of just verbally attacking someone (amusingly, the court points to at least some evidence that VanderSloot himself had referred to negative articles about himself as "Frank-bashing" suggesting that VanderSloot knows damn well what "bashing" means). Either way, it seemed pretty clear that this was a SLAPP suit -- a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. It appears that billionaires have a habit of filing such things against people who say not nice things about them. There are lots of indications that this was a SLAPP suit. Tellingly, VanderSloot's lawsuit claimed $74,999 in damages. That's exactly $1 less than the $75,000 amount that would qualify the lawsuit for "diversity," meaning that Mother Jones would likely be able to remove it from a local Idaho court (where VanderSloot's company is a major advertiser and employer) to a federal court (possibly in California -- where there's a strong anti-SLAPP statute).

You might have figured this out already, but Idaho has no anti-SLAPP statute.

Mother Jones and its insurance company ended up having to spend over $2 million defending against the lawsuit, and it seems pretty clear that VanderSloot was just trying to silence (or at least punish) reporters who criticized him. Partway through the lawsuit, he apparently added Zuckerman to the lawsuit (as noted above, he had been a reporter at the Idaho Post Register, where he'd written about a Boy Scout scandal). In response to those original articles, VanderSloot's company had taken out ads about Zuckerman in the paper, mentioning his sexuality and questioning his ability to fairly cover the Boy Scout story. However, the actions, once again, showed how someone with lots of money can file these lawsuits and really mess up the lives of people they just don't like:

At one point, Zuckerman was subjected to roughly 10 hours of grilling by VanderSloot's lawyers about every detail of the controversy in Idaho Falls, including the breakup with his boyfriend of five years. (VanderSloot also threatened to sue the ex-boyfriend, backing off only after he recanted statements he'd made about the Boy Scouts episode.) As the lawyers kept probing, Zuckerman broke down and cried as he testified that the time after the ads appeared was one of the darkest periods of his life. VanderSloot, who had flown to Portland for the occasion, sternly looked on. (His lawsuit against Zuckerman is ongoing.)

And then there were things like this:

And that wasn't the end of it. VanderSloot's legal team subpoenaed the Obama campaign, which had run ads naming him as a major Republican donor. Apparently they believed we had somehow fed the campaign that information—never mind that our article, and the Federal Election Commission data that prompted it—was on the internet for anyone to read.

When officials from the Obama campaign refused to turn over their records—offering to confirm under oath that there had been no communication between them and Mother Jones—VanderSloot's lawyers dragged them into court, resulting in the spectacle of a major GOP donor seeking access to the Democratic campaign's emails. His lawyers did the same thing to a political researcher who had gathered information on VanderSloot and who also had no connection to Mother Jones.

While the case against Zuckerman is still ongoing, the court totally dismissed the case against Mother Jones (and its CEO who had put up a snarky tweet linking to the article), properly noting that none of the statements in question come close to defamation, as they're all protected opinion or hyperbole.

At the end of the lawsuit -- for no clear reason -- the judge, Darla Williamson, makes it clear that even though she's tossing the defamation claims, she really does not like Mother Jones' brand of journalism. It's not at all clear what that has to do with anything, but she notes that she finds its "reporting styles, and indeed the general trend in political journalism, troubling." Bizarrely, based on this little aside, VanderSloot himself has claimed he's pleased with the judge's ruling, despite the fact that he lost on every count. He's also announced that he's creating a $1 million fund to sue other media outlets that he determines are siding with the "liberal" agenda and attacking conservatives. In fact, he's announced that the ruling has vindicated himself. That link also ridiculously claims that he only lost on "technicalities." That's true if "technicalities" means "filing defamation claims over non-defamatory statements."

In response to the decision, VanderSloot said, “I feel absolutely vindicated. The judge gave us much more than a jury could have ever given us. This case was never about money. Our attempt was to vindicate our good name and to point out what type of sleazy journalism that Mother Jones put out to attack conservative positions. In our case we made a large donation in support of Mitt Romney and so they attacked me to punish me for the donation. The judge made it clear that is what happened here and that Mother Jones has little regard for the truth in its attempts to smear people it disagrees with. This case will not need to go to a jury. We are happy with that. A jury could not have given us a bigger win. We got more than what we hoped for from the court.”

Tom Clare, one of VanderSloot’s lawyers, stated, “This case was never about financial damages. It was about setting the record straight. We were going to ask the jury to award only $1 in damages, but the Court’s conclusions regarding Mother Jones’ ‘skewed’ and ‘biased’ reporting about Mr. VanderSloot are far better than any $1 verdict. It is great to get this result. My client has been totally vindicated.”

All this seems to confirm that this was nothing but a SLAPP suit from the beginning. Note that he doesn't care that he's lost the actual lawsuit and that his claims of defamation were shown to be flat out wrong. He's still pleased, because the judge didn't like Mother Jones' style. It's likely he's also pleased that the company had to waste time, money and resources to fight this lawsuit. And now he's establishing a fund to help do the same sort of thing to others.

Once again, it's stories like these that demonstrate why we need a strong federal anti-SLAPP law as well as strong state-by-state anti-SLAPP laws that would allow those sued in these kinds of lawsuits to have them dismissed quickly, and to get back their legal fees.

from the can-you-heal-not-understanding-the-law? dept

Oh boy. Today in Streisanding, we've got a lawsuit filed by Adam Miller, a faith healer, against Stephanie Guttormson, supposedly over claims of copyright infringement and defamation, though neither claim holds up under much scrutiny. Instead, this looks like a typical SLAPP suit, in which Miller is upset about a video that mocks him and his faith healing and decides to sue over it. Enter Stresiand Effect. The video is currently up, and the view count is rapidly escalating. At the time the lawsuit was filed (according to the lawsuit) it had about 1,500 views. Now it's much more:

There's nothing too surprising in the video, but it basically uses one of Miller's own promotional videos and intersperses some commentary and criticism. The lawsuit... is... well... a joke. First, he claims copyright infringement, though this is pretty obviously fair use. It's being used for criticism and commentary, and in order to make that work, it needs to show clips of the video. Miller's lawyer tries, weakly, to present a few arguments to try to get around fair use, including arguing that it's commercial use. Of course, as we keep repeating, commercial use does not mean that you can't have fair use. Tons of fair use involves commercial use. And, even given that, it's ridiculous to argue that this is "commercial use." The best the lawsuit can do is claim that the inclusion at the end of the video of a couple of "advertisements" makes it commercial. That, alone, probably isn't even enough to claim this is "commercial use," (which is generally more about selling the actual work or directly profiting). Plus, it's not even accurate. The "advertisements" aren't really advertisements at all, but rather a friendly acknowledgement of who sent her the video, with a link to that guy's own website and audio bookstore, with a mention that Guttormson appears on that guy's podcast every so often.

The lawsuit also claims too much of the original video was used, but there's little evidence to support that. Guttormson comments on basically every clip in the video, so it's hard to see how she's using "more of the original work than was necessary" as the lawsuit claims.

The lawsuit also alleges, as part of the copyright claim, that "Guttormson is liable for the actual harm caused to Mr. Miller as a result of Guttormson’s infringement and statutory damages." That's an interesting claim, but completely bullshit in the copyright context. The "actual harm" has to be over the copyright. Unless there was "actual harm" in Miller no longer being able to license/sell that video to a third party because they felt they could see it all for free through Guttormson's video (a crazy claim), then there's no actual harm. If the commentary in Guttormson's video, which mocks Miller's wacky faith healing nonsense, created "actual harm," well, that's not a copyright issue and is unrelated to any copyright claim.

The lawsuit also makes some claims about how the video itself was never actually released, but rather was password protected in Miller's wife's account. So the lawsuit alleges that Guttormson must have "hacked" into Eve Miller's account. In the video itself, however, as mentioned above, Guttormson notes that it was actually David Smalley who sent her the video. And while it's not entirely clear, from the comment threads under the video, it certainly sounds like Miller's video was most likely publicly available somewhere online. The evidence of "hacking" here seems really weak. And if there was hacking, the evidence that it was Guttormson is non-existent.

As for the defamation claims... there are only two specific things called out in the lawsuit. The first is this:

As just one example, Guttormson explains what happens at an appointment with Mr. Miller, “You will be fed faith-based bullshit.” This statement is false and defamatory; Mr. Miller’s work does not require a client to hold any faith, and he has worked with non-believers and atheists.

Um. Okay, it appears that Miller's lawyer is misrepresenting what "faith-based" means in this context. Guttormson isn't saying that those seeing Miller are expected to "have faith in a certain religion." She's saying that the treatment by Miller is not evidence based but is based on someone's blind "faith" in Miller being able to actually do something. And, besides, Miller's own words show that he's pitching a bunch of faith-based quackery. In the video clip, he himself explains the process, noting talking first about how he talks to people who come to them about things that happened in their childhood, like "traumas" that might explain their illnesses (really) and then says:

And then after we get through this, we put them on the table, and great holy spirit comes and breaks up dark cellular structure that creates any illness. Because I believe that illnesses are of a dark path.

That's like the definition of "faith-based" right there.

The other "defamation" claim is about the title of the video, which refers to Miller as a "con man." For the most part, courts don't consider phrases like that defamatory though (there are some exceptions, but it very much depends on context and if they're alleging a very specific thing, rather than a general insult). The link there is from Perle & Williams on Publishing Law and notes:

As Dean Prosser observed, "[A] certain amount of vulgar name-calling is tolerated on the theory that it will necessarily be understood to amount to nothing more." Thus, "communism" is too amorphous a characterization to be actionable, as is the term "grifter." The term "crook" has been held by one court to be a word of general disparagement rather than an allegation of specific criminal conduct, and thus was not slander; a restaurant critic's remark that a restaurateur was a "pig" and a television news editorial that referred to a chiropractor as a "quack" and a "cancer con artist" were held to be expressions of opinion; the words "those bastards" were held "mere epithets... as terms of abuse and opprobrium" and as such were not actionable for defamation; referring to a judge as "incompetent," "arrogant," "biased," and "one of the 10 worst judges in New York" was not held to be defamatory; calling a stockholder a "silly, stupid, senile bum" was not held to be slanderous; referring to Carl Sagan as a "butt-head astronomer" was held not libelous; and referring to a masonry contractor as a "shithead" was held not actionable....

In short, the likelihood that calling Miller a "con artist" is "defamation," let alone "defamation per se" as the lawsuit alleges, is... quite unlikely.

Even more to the point, this was a video that almost no one had seen. And now, because of this lawsuit, not only are tons more people checking it out, even more people will start investigating Adam Miller and the claims he makes about his "healing" services. Miller's website has gone down, but a quick look through the internet archive shows that it's chock-full of quackery (note to Miller's lawyer: that's not defamatory, so buzz off):

What this healing work is...

The Great and Holy Beings, such as Mother Mary, Jesus, Buddha, Quan Yin, Saint Germain, Archangel Michael and many others come into a person's body and transmute with light every single cell and raise the vibratory rate. In other words, diseases or injuries in the body have a very low, darkened vibration and when a Holy Being works with any person it changes the cellular structure permanently and the issue that is being worked on will never come back. This work is permanent. It is important to understand that Adam Miller is not a conduit, or psychic or related to any other work on the planet. This work is a result of Adam's death experience. Adam Miller would never claim to do this work himself. It is done by Holy Beings only.

So, uh, yeah. And he's the one claiming that "faith-based bullshit" is defamatory? Yikes.

Meanwhile, before filing the lawsuit, it appears that Miller posted another video announcing his response to the video above. In it he notes that a lawsuit is being prepared. But he also has a bunch of his "happy clients" give testimonials or complain about Guttormson, claiming that what she said was, like, really mean and "unprofessional." If Miller had merely posted his response including such testimonials, that would be perfectly fine. You deal with speech you dislike with more speech. But suing someone with bogus claims of defamation and copyright infringement? When you're spewing quackery? Not only is that going to flop in court, it's just going to lead a lot of people to examine what you're selling yourself...